Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is the first year my little orchard has produced large quantities of apples, so I hauled out a vintage mechanical peeler that had been sitting in the attic for 25 years. I spent an hour trying to fine tune it and not have it destroy every apple I tried. I thought I was stuck with hand peeling, but decided to check and see if there was anything available that wasn't more trouble than it was worth. After reading the reviews for various peelers here, and watching a bunch of YouTube videos, I decided to give this one a try. It worked perfectly right out of the box, and required only about 30 seconds to screw on the handle and the tines. Here is what I liked best: -Solid construction, nicely machined, and well-finished -Suction base sticks fiercely to my granite counter and doesn't come loose; if you have a smooth, non-porous surface to mount it on, this is so much better than the ones that clamp to the underside of the counter with a screw (and invariably wobble) -Very clearly written instruction book (not some bad translation into English from another language) -Reasonable price (I know there is another one on this site that looks about the same, and costs a few bucks less, but I thought this one had better overall reviews) -Works with a wide variety of apple sizes, even ones that are pretty large; also adapts well to lopsided apples without messing up -The hoop that does the coring does a really good job of keeping the apple centered, despite the shape of the apple. You just need to do your best to align the apple when mounting it on the tines, but the peeler is pretty forgiving even if the apple has a fair amount of wobble -Once it starts cutting it doesn't miss any part of the peel on the bulk of the apple; it leaves only about 1/8" at the top and bottom where the apple is "flat"...and I just eat that -The spiral cut slices are a great thickness for dehydrating, for freezing, and for making pies I was concerned that the loop-shaped blade would "waste" more apple flesh than a straight blade, but the waste is trivial. In fact, in my experience with a straight-bladed model, the gouging on all the apples that weren't perfectly shaped did lead to a lot of waste. For my first batch, I processed about 50-60 apples of 5 different species, which ranged widely in size, symmetry, and firmness. The only one I had trouble with was one that wasn't a firm apple to start with and had been sitting out for a couple of weeks; it was so soft that the tines started to turn freely in the core before the whole apple was finished being peeled. If I would have processed it when it was fresh this wouldn't have been a problem. I set mine up on the edge of the granite counter right next to the sink, and all the waste went right in: no more peels and apple juice making my floor sticky. This is one of those kitchen gadgets that works well consistently, as opposed to those that work well 90% of the time, but are annoying and time consuming the other 10% of the time. In fact, this is actually fun to use and fast...and that's important when you are looking at dealing with bushels of apples.